


You See I Try To Be Cool, But The Problem Is Using My Emotions Up

by Asukachan07



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Kickstart, Barry Allen Loves Iris West, Best Friends, Character Study, Eobard Thawne Is His Own Warning, Episode Rewrite: s01e09 - The Man In Yellow, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Iris West Loves Barry Allen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Their Love Is So, West-Allen - Freeform, West-Allen Family (The Flash TV 2014) Feels, West-Allen Is Endgame, pseudo-siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27554236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asukachan07/pseuds/Asukachan07
Summary: Rewrite of s1e9: Barry confesses his love for Iris when she mentions that Eddie's being weird about him...after an intro by Joe as he raises the kids.
Relationships: Barry Allen & Iris West, Barry Allen & Joe West, Barry Allen/Iris West, minor Eddie Thawne/Iris West - Relationship
Comments: 36
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [It Can't Be Science](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22221124) by [Asukachan07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asukachan07/pseuds/Asukachan07). 



> I swear I was re-watching s1 for my other canonverse WIP "It Can't Be Science" linked above, but Iris (read= the show writers) annoyed me so much in that episode being all cute with Barry for their Christmas gifts, then throwing "I love you" to Eddie when it's clear that she doesn't love him like that, and then having the gall to look disappointed when Barry says that he doesn't like her romantically.
> 
> So yeah, here's another WIP. Work title from "Kiss The Boy" by our very own Keiynan Lonsdale! I know it's a BL's song but doesn't it sound like Barry/Flash is talking to Iris?

"Hey West, how's the kid adjusting?" Detective Chyre asks, and Joe lifts his nose out of his paperwork.

He's got no idea why he thought that becoming a detective would make that aspect of being a cop easier. It's ten times worse!

"To be honest Detective, I don't know," Joe answers truthfully. "He's stopped asking me to take him to Iron Heights, at least, but he hasn't warmed up to me one bit. He's actually giving me the cold shoulder."

"You know it's weird for you to still call me 'Detective', right?" His partner points out with a chuckle. "You've been my equal in everything but paycheck until last month!"

Well, they're still not equals in paycheck because Chyre has seniority...right?

"Like I said before, just call me Chyre or Fred," Chyre reminds him. "Not 'Freddie', and certainly not 'Frederic'. That's reserved for my dad and maternal grandmother, respectively."

Joe chuckles at his partner's welcomed humor, and he decides to give his eyes some rest from staring at the screen with too few pixels.

It's embarrassing that the computers at the public library are much better than those at the station. If Joe hadn't become Barry Allen's legal guardian he would've never known that. 

The kids spend quite some time in that huge building, which is a relief to his pockets. Leaving them there alone until almost closing time twice a week is limit negligent, but he really can't afford a babysitter for more than four hours at a time now that he has a second kid to take care of. 

At least his new detective salary allows him to financially support two kids in the first place, and now he knows for certain that Iris is never alone. That was his greatest fear for an entire day, after he'd given himself a moment to grieve for his good friend Nora.

Nora Allen, née Thompson, his not-really neighbor from two blocks down, was so good to him and his baby girl. From the day that Iris invited Barry to a sleepover at the end of their first week of school in first grade, Nora was the mother figure Joe didn't imagine that Iris would get. Within a few weeks that complete stranger did more for Iris than Francine in six years.

And Joe knows that he must tell Iris about her mother some day, because now she thinks that Barry is motherless just like her.

He's not worried because it's not the only nor the most important reason why these two kids are inseparable. They just are. 

Barry's therapist claims that having Iris' friendship as a constant when the rest of his life has turned upside down is what's helping him adjust to his circumstances.

In Joe's opinion Barry isn't adjusting well, especially considering that he still believes that his father is innocent of the very undeniable crime of stabbing his wife to death. 

Joe obviously wasn't the primary investigator of the homicide, but Bellows allowed him to take a look at the case. Other than the poor kid, Henry was the only person present at the crime scene and that makes him the only possible murderer. It's a no-brainer.

The intruder that Barry claims is the one who stabbed his mother doesn’t exist. He’s the not-so-surprising fruit of his young mind’s imagination.

It doesn’t help that Iris insists that she believes Barry’s account of that tragic night. A man in yellow who came out of nowhere and similarly left in the blink of an eye? The worst part is that she refuses to stop entertaining her best friend’s fantasies! Joe’s taught his girl better than this! She keeps arguing that Barry's not a liar, nor delusional...

“Gives the boy more time for his daddy’s issues,” Chyre assures him with confident nods. “After the holidays and his birthday he’ll call you ‘daddy’ unprompted. Trust me.”

“Wait, what?” Joe reacts a bit too loudly, drawing a few pairs of eyes for all of ten seconds. “No, no, I’m not...I’m just his legal guardian, Det—Chyre.”

“For now, yes,” his partner agrees with a slight frown. “But you’re not going to let the government place him with another family, right? He and Iris are thick as thieves! Cutest pair of kids at the precinct, hands down.”

Yeah, apparently everyone loves watching Iris and Barry do their homework in the wait room while Joe himself crawls through his own piles of papers in his office during overtime. They use a single armchair as a table, sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor but on top of newspapers. The employees and visitors are equally smitten…alright, maybe more so the visitors because two children politely asking if they need a seat is the last thing that they expect to see at a police station. 

Certo, whose desk job is to collect statements, swears that people who write their statements when the kids are present provide more details and actually thank him for reminding them to visit the station—that’s not his job, but he gladly collects the big smiles too!

“Murderer or not, his father is still alive,” Joe points out to his colleague. “I can never replace him. Plus the boy has a crush on Iris…”

“Right, right!” Chyre remembers with an apologetic wave of his hand. “Wait until that passes first, then he’ll be ready for adoption.”

Joe’s not sure about adoption (meaning it won't happen) and he’s ambivalent about Barry’s feelings for his daughter. 

On the one hand, he’s worried about what will happen in just a couple of years if Iris starts returning those feelings; on the other hand, Barry’s feelings are definitely what are keeping him from running away or doing other stupid things that Joe can see he is tempted to do. He can see it in his bright eyes, and so can Iris so she distracts him with a game, a movie...or more surprisingly the book that Nora used to read him in bed.

Joe will never stop being weirded out by how almost motherly Iris is with Barry. He's the eldest of the two! But he is shorter than her, so it doesn't seem odd to third parties.

*****

"You don't know how lucky you are, Joe," Fred declares with a long sigh as the two of them scramble to type in all their notes from the series of interviews they've gone through for the past two days.

Another overtime after zero progress in the investigation. 

"What you mean?" Joe asks, then tsks when he realizes that he's typing the second to last interview again.

They all said the same thing, that "maybe it's the anti-social neighbor who killed the old lady as retaliation for her killing his cat…"

First of all, the anti-social neighbor is actually very social, so much so that he has his own radio talk show. His crew as well as fourteen live callers make a pretty damn good alibi. Second of all, the guy proved that it's actually the victim's cat, not his.

Unreliable narrators...

"Oh, don't you play dumb, Mr. 'Parent of the Year' for the sixth consecutive time," Chyre drawls. "You're the only one whose kids aren't giving him karma for his own stupid teenage stunts. And don't you say that you were a good kid, I remember seeing you around during my green days!"

No, Joe wasn't a model kid, so it is a wild thing that he doesn't have to worry about his daughter. A decade ago, he thought that he'd have to defend his very pretty and too kind daughter from perverts of all ages when puberty hit her. Now there are days when he wishes his daughter would get in trouble just for the sake of normalcy.

Instead, since the beginning of summer, Iris has been the weekend babysitter of several children around the block. To the parents' delight, she's educating the little ones in money management by organizing lemonade sales. The kids do all the calculation work, and when they're right Iris merely hands out the plastic cups.

Those lemonade sales generate so much money that the three sets of parents are now paying Iris triple whatever her original pay was just so she won't find another job. 

Joe suspects that in another life he'd be worried that his kid is secretly selling drugs rather than lemonade. But in this life everything is innocently straightforward: the same private school kids that Barry tutors are the ones buying stupid amount of sugary lemon water from Iris' kids...well, from Iris. Let's be real.

And those rich kids are the ones who in another life would distract Iris from school and from her plans for the future. But she's not interested in any boy. In fact it's Barry who's got a girlfriend...and Iris sounds jealous.

If Barry didn't live under his roof, now would be the time Joe encourages the kid to talk to his daughter. Like, talk feelings. The romantic kind. But the cop is just fine with them being oblivious about each other's heart. Iris will keep her innocence until she's of age and it's likely that Barry will force himself to move on from his first love and care a bit more about that Cooper girl.

Joe's not happy that the reason why Iris and Barry are blind to their mutual feelings is that they spend all their time strategizing about finding Nora's "real killer" and exonerating Henry. 

They're seventeen years old! When will they finally accept the truth? It hurts, yes, but it is what it is!

Barry shouldn't waste his big science brain by becoming a forensics scientist. Not that it's not a great career, but the pay isn't all that at Joe's station, not even level two detectives are well-paid, he repeatedly tells the kids!

But yeah, Fred's right: Joe's got the most straight-laced teenagers in the whole world, and that's because they don't want to jeopardize their chance to work for the government. Sometimes Joe is the one reminding them to go to their schoolmates' parties in the hope that some kid out there will tempt them away from careers that they're picking for the wrong reasons.

Barry's dad himself doesn't want them to waste their time on him. 

Joe's still not over the nerves of Henry for telling him that he's disappointed in him, not only for failing to be the perfect father figure who would make Barry forget that he's got a biological father, but also for failing to keep Iris away from 'all this mess as well!'

But you know what? Henry's right, at least about Iris. Joe can't do nothing about Barry, who constantly reminds him that once he's eighteen there's nothing Joe can say that will change his mind about helping his dad.

But he is Iris’ father, and he is owed a few favors at the station. If he tells her that her application will never get accepted…

  
  


* * *

Iris' mom died when she was six years old. She doesn't remember much about her, and for a while she thought that it's because she was too young back then.

But Iris very clearly remembers Barry’s mom taking her to libraries, museums, glass gardens and Barry’s choir concerts at the catholic church during that same year, and she remembers Barry's mom calling Iris' dad to tell him that he didn't have to worry about making it to school because she was taking Iris and Barry back with her after they got in trouble because of a fight with Tony.

So when Barry loses his mom, Iris knows that it's not exactly the same as her losing her mom because her mom wasn't very present in the first place. But she knows how it feels to envy the other kids who have their moms, though she never envied Barry because he shared his mom with her.

So when the rumor that Barry has become Iris' brother starts spreading in school, Iris doesn't correct anyone. Barry has become part of her family since her dad accepted to take him in, so she's not offended to be called his sister even though she prefers to call him her best friend.

For years, Iris' greatest source of anxiety is that the man who killed Nora and is responsible for Henry's imprisonment is still roaming free, capable of hurting Barry again. So she doesn't think twice when Barry shares that he wants to become a forensic scientist to find the proof of his dad's innocence: she promises that she'll be the cop who will arrest the bad man who hurt him so terribly.

Iris feels her bond to Barry fracture when she can't uphold that promise because her dad swears that he'll do everything in his power to keep her from earning a badge. Even David Singh can't help her. 

She's devastated that she can't help Barry the way she wants, and in college she picks up the bad habit of dating guys she doesn't care much about just so that she can limit her hangout time with Barry. That way they spend more time having fun, though their meetings always start with Barry hitting a dead end about his research on the odd phenomena he saw the night of his mom's murder. 

Iris contributes some, but not much because she only passed college algebra thanks to Barry, and Barry himself encourages her to do her own thing...or rather journalism, which is kinda like being a detective but everyone hates you for sharing unpleasant truths. Everyone including the police, so of course her dad's against that career too. Whatever. Barry's support is all she needs!

Barry's relationship with Iris' dad has never been very great because the cop never believed in Henry's innocence. Nevertheless Barry always plays mediator between Iris and her dad when they have a fight because he knows how lucky Iris is to have her surviving parent free and available to talk about anything whenever and wherever...unlike him who only gets to see his dad via visitation booth at Iron Heights, half an hour a day on days when he doesn't have to do overtime. 

Iris doesn't visit Henry because she's ashamed of being so useless to him...but then Barry gets hit by lightning and he dies, is resurrected, then Dr. Wells stabilizes him into some sort of coma. Iris knows that her dad will only pass on a message to Henry via Iron Heights' warden, so she ignores her shame and takes it upon herself to provide the former doctor all the details she remembers about Barry's condition.

That's when she learns that something is very, very wrong with her best friend.

"That's impossible," Henry says when she's done telling him what's happened.

Iris first thinks that maybe Dr. Allen's medical knowledge is outdated, it's been fifteen years since he's practiced after all, but he tells Iris what he hasn't dared tell Barry because he didn't want to give him false hope: he's kept up his medical training thanks to the jail's library that he has regular access to because he's a model inmate. Though he might never practice again, he's caught up on the medical advancements of the past fifteen years, so Iris believes him when he repeats that what's happening to his son isn't humanly possible.

He's not very well versed on theoretical physics so he cannot enlighten her about the repercussions of the particle accelerator explosion. And near the end of the visit Henry urges her to take care of herself. How’s life? What are her career goals? Is she taking the time to hang out with friends who can talk back? Also...is she dating?

So Iris gets more serious with her journalism and by the time she finally gets her master's she's three months into dating Eddie Thawne...secretly of course because he’s her dad’s partner and while there are no regulations against this type of relationship it’s awkward.

Iris’ really trying to find her place into this world and it’s hard to do it without Barry, but thinking about Barry hurts and Eddie’s a good distraction from the pain. It’s really not that serious, she’s just in this weird transitional phase until she gets her dream job, hopefully soon because Barry’s rent is slightly above her barista’s paycheck and she’s started using her savings so that she doesn’t use Barry’s to keep his stuff waiting for him when he wakes up.

Both Iris’ dad and Eddie are weirded out that she knows all of Barry’s passwords and PIN numbers, but really it’s not that weird: they’re best friends, closer than most biological siblings out there, and it’s not awkward that they overshare even though they’re not actually siblings. She even reminded Barry of the fact the week before he went into a coma.

Barry’s gonna wake up, Iris knows that. He would never leave her behind, nor would he ever give up on freeing his dad. He’s gonna wake up, soon, and she’ll be there for him when he goes through rehab and all the undignified steps of learning to be a fully functioning human being after months of lying in a hospital bed.

Well, Barry’s not actually lying in a hospital bed, is he? He’s lying in a makeshift infirmary in a class four hazard facility. And the more she thinks about it, the more Iris suspects that Dr. Harrison Wells isn't who he seems to be. But until Barry wakes up she’s not going to antagonize the man. He’s the only one capable of caring for her best friend and just for that she’ll ignore the creepy vibes that the genius emits. At least Cisco is fun and Dr. Snow is...heartbroken yet still making sure that Barry’s heart keeps going. Iris is so grateful for them.

She is beyond grateful when Barry walks into Jitters on the ninth month after he gets hit by lightning and he's perfectly fine, no rehab needed, nothing except a fast-beating heart. It really feels like he’s a new person, reborn from whatever freak death he experienced.

And Iris doesn’t mean it in a good way.

Barry, her best friend, isn’t happy about her dating the guy thanks to whom her dad was able to visit him at S.T.A.R. Labs as often as he did. Of course she knows that dating Eddie is very stupid because her dad is going to find out and condescend her about it, but Barry is supposed to be understanding about her stupid mistakes, not judgemental! And he’s not supposed to just walk away without telling her how he feels about witnessing a freak accident.

Barry, her almost brother, isn’t happy that she is making connections between the paranormal events that become routine in Central City and his account of his mom’s murder. They’ve never fought the way they did over the Streak—no, the Flash. At least Barry helps Iris find a cooler name for the scarlet speedster.

And okay, it makes sense for Barry to defend Dr. Wells, the man saved his life, but that doesn’t make him any less responsible for what’s going on in their city! Why is he still here, even? His business failed, his life dream is dead, he’s got no family...and what are Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow going to do now?

The Flash himself is kinda dodgy about how he got his powers, but at least he’s got Iris' back. So no, Eddie shouldn’t be jealous, but can he acknowledge all the good that the guy’s doing? All the other powered people out there are using their abilities to do bad things and the scarlet speedster is helping people!

Until he gets whammied by a meta whose powers amplify his anger, and not only does the Flash attack Eddie, but he spitefully tells Iris that she doesn’t know him.

It’s true: Iris doesn’t know who that guy is beneath the mask, and for almost an hour she debates forgiving him because he was under someone else's influence, and she feels a connection to him like she's never felt before...other than Barry of course, but Barry's family.

Iris probably shouldn’t cut off the Flash, but...he attacked her boyfriend. If it wasn’t for the Arrow, Eddie might be dead. All this time he’s been right to see the Flash as a menace.

So Iris listens to her overprotective dad and intuitive boyfriend and she puts an end to what she thought was the start of an exciting hero-reporter partnership. You know, like Superman and Lois Lane? But Lois Lane is a real reporter, not a blogger. And she doesn’t have a cop dad and a cop boyfriend. Or an almost absent CSI best friend.

But Christmas comes around and Barry and her get back to normal again. She refuses to think about the fact that she spent last Christmas crying over him not waking up from his coma because this year everything’s great, what with Barry surpassing himself with his Christmas gift. He looks pretty happy about his microscope too, but he’s just back to being too supportive to make her feel bad about doing things wrong.

Eddie gets weirded out by Barry’s gift, but that doesn’t stop him from giving Iris the best thing she got this year after Barry waking up: her way out from being a typical millennial who’s still living with her dad at twenty five years old! 

And hey, she loves Eddie, more than she’s loved any of her previous boyfriends, none of whom ever lasted this long. There’s no crazy sparks between them—oh, she needs to tell Barry about the blue spark of electricity that happened when he was in the coma!—but he’s handsome and a good guy and a good cop...What else could a girl want, right?

Her dad’s support of her relationship, but whatever. Iris’ got Barry, and it’s ridiculous that Eddie feels threatened by him because he should feel intimidated instead. It’s Barry’s fault for being too nice, Iris supposes? Other brotherly figures or best friends would try to intimidate the boyfriend, right? But not her nerdy best friend. She’s missed him, really, so she’s got high hopes for this Christmas season. Things started so well already!

As she walks into a less trafficked CCPD, Iris can’t stop giggling at how unreasonably nervous she is about telling Barry how silly Eddie is about him. This is so dumb, why does she have to bring this up!? Oh well, she’s the one who last year told Barry that they should be able to talk about their respective relationships without making it awkward. If Barry wasn’t ghosting her so often, Iris would’ve hooked him up with a cute girl by now! It’s really too bad that Felicity lives all the way in Star City.

  
  


* * *

"...rry! Barry!" The sound of Iris' voice brings him back to the present, away from that terrible night fifteen years ago.

He's been staring at the board of his mom's case, realizing with disappointment and self-loathing that he’s been spending too much time at S.T.A.R. Labs and helping other people when he should’ve been helping his dad get out of jail the moment he had solid proof that what he saw as a kid was real.

Barry wants to be mad at Joe for not telling him about the man in yellow...scratch that, he is mad at Joe for keeping the man in yellow’s visit secret! And his reason is because the guy threatened to kill Iris? Who says that he’ll leave Iris alone now? He killed Barry’s mom and she’d never hurt anybody! Iris isn't safe!

Barry can’t even warn her as the Flash because she doesn’t want to deal with him anymore. She listened to Barry’s own advice to stay away from the speedster and now only that speedster has a chance at keeping her safe from another speedster who might very well enhance his speed with Dr. McGee’s tachyon prototype.

Damn it. Barry should’ve never kept his powers secret from Iris. Why did he even listen to Joe? Joe never believed him about his mom’s murder, but Iris did! 

The board in front of him would’ve never seen the light of day without Iris' constant support and faith in Barry all these years. He hasn't thanked her for that lately.

Just like he hasn’t told her about how he feels about her, how he’s been feeling about her for fifteen years now.

Being under the influence of Bivolo’s powers has made him realize how passive he’s been about expressing his feelings to Iris, so he’s been trying to slowly build up the courage to tell her. Speed-searching the zoo to gift her her mom’s authentic wedding band is a way to send her a subliminal message, but now the man in yellow is back and Barry can’t think straight—

"I called your name, like," Iris points out with that breathy chuckle of hers, but then her face falls.

Right, Barry has never shown her his board. He didn’t want her to keep spending so much of her time looking for red herrings when she had her own life to live and she didn't work for the police so could get in trouble for snooping.

"Your mom's case," she quickly identifies what she's seeing.

"I used to stare at this board every day," he confesses, because talking to her still has a therapeutic effect. "Lately I haven't looked at it as much as I should've."

"I didn't know you did that," Iris admits, not an ounce of accusation in her voice.

In fact, Barry's quite sure that right now she feels guilty for not contributing to the board. She’s hiding it well...because she’s got some announcement to make? Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as what he has to tell her about the man in yellow.

Joe will be mad at him but this whole deal of keeping secrets isn’t working at all. Barry will die before he lets the man in yellow lay a finger on Iris!

"I guess there's still stuff about me you don't know," he tells her, hoping that it’s a nice enough opening to a talk he’s now getting very nervous about.

Iris returns his nervous smile and he gets even more nervous because while he can deal with Joe being disappointed in him—that’s basically all their relationship was for fifteen years since Barry refused to “accept things as they are”—he can’t take Iris’ disappointment very well.

Until he woke up with his superpowers, Iris’ never been anything but supportive and uplifting. In just a few months their friendship has been on an unprecedented rollercoaster, and if that’s not a sign that they’re ready to redefine their relationship, Barry doesn’t know what is.

"Eddie… asked me to move in with him...I said yes," Iris announces semi-cheerfully. 

Scratch that.

Wow, the universe has a sick sense of humor.

"Wow," he says out loud, letting go an exhale of frustration.

He pushes on the wheels of his chair to get to his desk, and points out "you guys are moving pretty fast, huh?" 

Is this really his life right now? In the middle of working overtime every damn day, dealing with meta-human petty criminals every other day and being scared witless that the man who killed his mother has returned and is threatening to hurt Iris if the murder case is solved for real...this is Barry's most urgent problem: Detective Pretty Boy moving too fast with Iris, after moving onto her when Barry was in a freaking coma? 

Really?!

"Well, I mean it's been a year," Iris reminds him.

Right. From Barry's perspective it's only been a few months since he was struck by lightning and woke up after being knocked out by it, but in reality it's been a year.

And damn it, Barry hasn’t even apologized for leaving Iris to deal with her condescending dad and her dissertation all alone, has he? Nor has he thanked her for keeping things running for him: his apartment, his phone bill—they’ve got a bundle—all his favorite shows recorded, his print subscriptions to scientific journals all neatly stacked up. 

Talk about a best friend. How’s he going to be a worthy boyfriend if he can’t bother to be grateful for her friendship?

"Eddie...thought you might feel weird about it," Iris adds with another nervous chuckle, and her voice is wavering now.

While he fidgets with his phone, Barry hears that voice in his head, the voice that refused to leave even after he recovered from the influence of Bivolo’s powers, the voice that might have always been there or maybe it came with Barry's power...that voice says that Iris knows what she's doing to him. Barry disagrees.

She’s not doing it consciously, of course, but maybe deep down...there's no way that she doesn't know how he feels about her. She’s too smart not to know. 

And Barry refuses to believe that her being comfortable around the Flash from the moment they met doesn’t stem from the fact that parts of her knows that it’s her best friend underneath the mask. Why would a random stranger care so much about her? Well, other than the fact that she’s brave, smart, and so beautiful…right, okay.

But Barry more than anyone should be the one trying his hardest to protect her, the way she protected him for over a decade: from bullies, from sadness and depression, from dating Becky Cooper for longer than was healthy, but most importantly from doubting that he deserves to be happy.

He deserves to be happy, and he wants to be happy with her! How can she not see that?

Barry wants to blame her oblivion on all the people who called them siblings in school; he wants to blame it on Joe for calling him son this son that while he was keeping Barry away from his real dad; he wants to blame Iris' many flirts and short-term boyfriend's who guilt-tripped her for spending too much time with her ‘foster brother’; and heck, Barry wants to blame Iris herself for never letting him finish his confessions.

But really he's only got himself to blame. He's the one who should’ve said something since he was sixteen years old and still dreaming of her instead of Becky; he’s the one who thought that it was impossible for Iris to return his feelings because when he stopped dating Becky and stopped being Joe’s charity case Iris herself started dating as if she thought that him becoming a legal adult meant that she didn’t feel responsible for him anymore...like a sister would? And then she started trying to hook him up with girls who were supposed to see him as an amazing guy the way Iris herself sees him...then why has the idea of dating him herself never crossed her mind?

Barry chickened out on telling her how he feels so many times, thinking that it was impossible for him to get more than her sibling-like friendship.

Then he became the impossible.

When Iris talked to the Flash about Barry, he didn’t get the sense that she sees him as a brother figure the way she told him the week he got struck by lightning. And when Iris talked to Barry about the Flash, he didn’t get the sense that she could just shut him out after one mishap that wasn’t truly his fault.

Iris loves him, maybe not quite the way he wants her to love him, but the potential for more is there, and either Barry’s gonna back down like he’s done for all her other boyfriends, or—

"Why would he think that?" He asks as he channels his cocky speedster’s persona and spins in his chair to stare straight into her eyes.

He can tell right away that she expected him to be more awkward, to stutter a bit maybe.

He's not mad at her: even just a few hours ago he would have been a fumbling mess. Before he learned that the man who took his mom and got his dad caged surfaced again...yeah, Barry would've remained in his comfy friend zone, fantasizing about how things could be about him and Iris if only he got the guts to speak his mind. 

But he can’t remain passive, not anymore. Too many things are at stakes now. Even if Barry wasn’t madly in love with Iris he’d want to protect her at all costs, and he can’t just speed into Eddie’s apartment if something wrong happens to her. 

So sorry, not sorry, but Detective Pretty Boy made room in his closet for no reason, because if Iris moves out of Joe’s place, it’s gotta be to move in with Barry.

Because he’s getting the girl, whatever Oliver says.

"He...he thinks that," Iris' the one tripping over her words for a change, her innocent and oblivious smile gone.

He doesn't blink, so she looks away first. 

"I mean!" She scoffs, and Barry feels bad for making her uncomfortable but deep down he feels a bit vindicated too. "It sounds so silly that I can't say it…"

"Come on Iris, you can tell me anything, especially the silly stuff!" He reminds her, and his laughter visibly relaxes her. 

“He thinks that you,” she starts, takes a quick centering breath, all the while keeping a smile to make things less awkward—once Barry closes his mom’s case he might fill his board with pictures of Iris smiling in all the different ways that make his speedster’s heartbeat spike up as much as when he’s moving as fast as the speed of sound.

“Like me, romantically,” she finishes with a little wince that she disguises as a chuckle.

“I mean, Eddie’s wrong...” he starts correcting her with a light scoff while he’s still staring at her…

...and he sees the disappointment in her eyes and the half-fall of her forced smile clear as day.

See? He's not crazy. She's got feelings for him too!

“...Iris, I love you romantically,” he finishes his sentence, and it's not like he didn't expect her to look surprised, but when he tries to grab her hand some static snaps between them and she reacts way too dramatically with a loud gasp.

Before he can laugh about it, he gets mind-blown by how she goes from shocked to pensive, to shocked again, then...outraged?

"Iris?" He calls out to her when she steps away from him. "I know that my timing is off, but—"

"Funny that you'd say that after all those perfect timings before," she says bitterly, "Flash."

Oh.

Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!
> 
> Other than mishandling Iris and making Barry way too obsessed with her but not enough to confess (the friend zone doesn't exist, people!) the pilot season was soooo good! I miss Fake Wells/Thawne. I hope he'll make a comeback in s7!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late post 🙈

“I mean, Eddie’s wrong...” Barry denies calmly. 

Why does Iris feel...let down?

Of course she doesn't believe Eddie, but...she'd be lying if she said that she hadn't started revisiting memories of all the times Barry looked at her maybe a tiny bit longer than was appropriate. Is he really not attracted to her, even a little bit?

Nah. She's projecting her own old attraction to him, way back in freshman year of high school. It wasn't even a big deal. Him dating Becky Cooper had made Iris more aware of his good looks, that's all. Ugh, Becky Cooper. Iris hated how she had to share her best friend with that diva. Barry's next girlfriend better know from the get go that Iris comes first! Eddie doesn't get it because he doesn't have a best friend of his own.

Iris must face it: she thought that Barry had a crush on her for a hot minute because the Flash gave her the time of the day. It's a good thing that she's put an end to whatever was going on with the speedster because really he was making her feel too special. Or was it all in her head? She really thought that with her doing the investigation and him fighting the bad guys they would protect Central City in this new era of superpowered criminality. It had made her feel like back when she and Barry were planning their careers at CCPD together. They had big dreams an outstanding pair fighting for justice, starting with the justice owed to Henry and Nora. 

Barry is fulfilling that dream since he is working for the police, but Iris...ugh, she's still so bitter about her dad sabotaging her!

“...Iris, I love you romantically," present Barry says.

Her brain short circuits for a second, then almost crashes from running a hundred miles per hour.

What? Eddie is right! Oh God, what is she supposed to do? Reject Barry of course—wait, he's not even asking her out, duh, he could've done that anytime in the past...oh.

_Actually, while I was away, I had the time to think about...you know relationships. And well, I'm not in one, and you're not in one either. And you're my best friend Iris_.

He tried to tell her.

He's tried to tell her many times, hasn't he? But she always cut him off or misinterpreted his shyness.

_I know what you're gonna say, Barry!_

_I'm not sure you do._

No way.

No freaking way!

Iris tries to hold Barry's gaze without having her eyes pop out of their socket, and all the while she is reevaluating the meaning of life, because this is a monumental plot twist.

Err, is he really asking that they hold hands right now? Is he not aware of what he's just done? How can he be so—

Zap!

She gasps, because what the hell! That blue spark again!

That's not static electricity. Usually Iris only hears it unless she's in the dark. Here it shone bright blue for a whole second!

At least when Barry was in the coma he was hooked up to many machines producing electricity. The human body is a conductor, right? But now there's no source of electricity, there's just Barry. 

No offense to Caitlin, but Barry really needs to get checked out by another doctor. On top of these random bursts of electricity, there are the problems of his abnormally fast heartbeat and his crazy high body heat. Barry keeps saying that he's fine but—

Wait a second.

Wait a damn second.

A fast heartbeat, an abnormal body temperature, and releasing bursts of electricity at random...

It's as if...no, that can't be, right? But, but...

The Flash popped up out of nowhere nine months after the particle accelerator explosion. When Barry woke up from his coma...after being hit by lightning. 

Iris wants to doubt her intuition, but she can't. She shouldn't. She's smart and logical, and logic dictates that a superhero would've never taken such a keen interest in her, a complete stranger! Plus, Barry has never been in the same room as the Flash. The two of them are the same height, and Barry looks a bit more buff than before. That makes no sense for a normal human being after spending nine months in the coma!

A guy with superpowers, on the other hand...and now that she knows that Barry likes her...a lot of things make sense.

Wow.

Iris feels dumb, because now that she thinks about it, Barry is the one who gave the Flash his perfect name.

He named himself.

And Iris bets that Barry always defends Wells because he, Cisco and Caitlin are the ones who designed his cool suit and are helping him be a superhero as well as help him pretend to be normal. There's absolutely nothing wrong or different about Barry? Right.

Iris can't believe that she trusted Caitlin, but she's the medical doctor who watched Barry for nine months! Why wouldn't she believe her?

She lied to Iris through her teeth while casually asking her about the burning man, who she's probably going to recruit next. The nerves!

To be fair, the people at S.T.A.R. Labs don't owe her anything.

But her own best friend?

"Iris?" The best friend in question calls her name, and only then does she realize that she's taken two steps back, so she stops moving.

"I know that my timing is off, but," he dares say.

He dares!

"Funny that you'd say that after all those perfect timings before," she replies, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice before she utters his superheroes' name "Flash."

Her best friend is a superhero. Instead of telling her, he told a bunch of strangers who make him wear a mask when he does good.

A mask he has used to hide his identity and secretly flirt with her! No wonder she felt so connected and attached to the speedster from the get go!

Did Barry really gaslight her and—

"Oh my God!" She exclaims. "You hurt Eddie! He's not some random cop to the Flash! You hurt him out of jealousy?"

"What? No!" He lies at first, then winces. "I mean, partially? It's not...I wasn't myself that night, Iris, I swear!"

"Stop lying, Bartholomew!" She forbids him. "One more lie and I swear, I—"

"Iris, you have to believe me!" He pleads as he stands up.

She laughs her ugly laugh. 

"Believe you?" She echoes his words. "Of course I've always believed you, Barry, that's never been a problem between us! It's you who keeps secrets, it's you who made me sound like I was crazy when I talked to you about...yourself! About Harrison Wells knowing exactly what his machine did to people. What it did to you!"

"It was a tragic accident!" He defends the mad scientist, of course he does. "Iris, he lost people too! They were not just his employees, some of them were people he was close with! Caitlin's fiancé died!"

"Well it seems that she's finally moved on," Iris throws with less tact that she should use. "She sounded very interested in that burning man when I talked to her at Jitters a few hours ago. Can't say that I blame her, there's just something about superpowered guys that makes us girls swoon, you know? Yeah, you know."

He opens his mouth but closes it right away. At least he knows that he can only make things worse by arguing that point.

"Be honest and tell me one thing," she demands. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

"Tonight," he says, and he sounds sincere. "Iris I swear that I wanted to tell you from the start, but Joe told me that it would put you in danger, and of course that's bull, but at the time I didn't know..."

"Joe as in my dad?" She yells. "The cop who refused to believe in your dad's innocence, who called you delusional about the man in yellow for years and—"

"That's why I decided to tell you everything tonight!" He claims as he waves at the board with his scrap investigation about his mom's murderer. "The man in yellow is back, and when I asked Joe about my mom's case, he told me that the man in yellow took it weeks ago! Joe didn't tell me anything when that happened!"

"What?!" She reacts in alarm.

"And he told me that he kept the secret because the man in yellow threatened to hurt you," Barry adds as he passes a hand down his face and starts tapping his right foot. "And that's bull! The man in yellow is a speedster and a cold-blooded murderer, and who could stop him from hurting you any time he wants? Me! I'm the only one capable of seeing him move! I can protect you, Iris, but your dad didn't even tell me that you needed protection! We see each other every day..."

"You've known him since you were a kid, Barry," Iris points out, disappointed but not surprised by her dad's terrible habits of keeping secrets. 

She crosses her arms over her chest to hide the way her hands are shaking, and she also hides her fear behind annoyance because she doesn't want to validate Barry's idea that he's her knight in shiny armor—God, she called him her "guardian angel" to his face!

She's so angry, and embarrassed, and scared—

"Iris no, please don't," Barry pleads, because of course he sees through her.

She should've seen through him too, months ago!

"I can never apologize enough for actively keeping you in the dark about my powers and what happened at S.T.A.R. Labs," he accurately states as he carefully steps towards her, lifting a hand halfway up as if to hold hers, "but please don't shut me out now. You can get mad at me, and you can avoid me for however long you need when this is all over, but...your life is in danger. I don't care what Joe says—"

Iris catches the way his eyes start opening wider but then for a second or two things go blurry and windy and oh Lord, no...

"Iris West," a voice says as she stumbles across...the lawn of a football field?

She rights herself just as her brain registers that what she's staring at is the man in yellow Barry saw when he was ten. Oh God.

A weird buzzing sound resonates from him because he's vibrating his whole body. His voice just now came out distorted like the Flash's, but sounding a hundred percent more evil. The glowy red eyes are a dead giveaway, just saying. 

"I'd say 'pleasure to finally make your acquaintance' but I know more about you than you know about yourself," that terrible man claims. "Well, I know more than what's publicly known about you, anyways."

"The pleasure isn't shared," Iris says before her brain catches up to her lips.

How about not angering the cold-blooded murderer who moves faster than she can blink, huh?

"It would be if you knew what I've done for you both," he replies with a scoff, and wow, it must be because the Flash is Barry because those distorted sounds come out as effing creepy from this guy!

"Ah, there he is," the man in yellow says before Iris hears a familiar crack of electricity and feels her hair lift from the wind that blows sharply in front of her.

The Flash.

Iris wants to film the blurry fight that's about to happen, but she wants to survive this night because she's so sure that CCPN is gonna hire her. No dying until she annoys her dad by showing up to a crime scene with a notepad and a recorder in hands.

"Damn it!" She curses when the two speedsters start zooming around the football field, and her eyes only catches their movements when...the man in yellow beats on the Flash.

On Barry. He's going hard on him.

Oh God, please no, she can't lose her best friend!

"Hey, Ronald McDonald! Hey!" She shouts halfway through running towards the bleachers, trying to distract the bad guy away from the hero.

Is this really her life now? Crazy.

Of course the smart thing to do is to hide and hope that the evil speedster won't bother looking around when he's done beating up Barry, but she realizes that the man in yellow can probably find a needle in a hay stack, same as Barry.

She yells when the murderer in a yellow suit plants himself three feet away from her in a gush of wind.

"Flash!" She calls out by habit, but of course he can't help her. 

"You have such a fascinating trust in him when you don't even know him," the man in yellow says, chuckling like a maniac.

Oh.

Is he implying that he himself knows that the Flash is Barry? Well, he could have removed Barry's mask during their fight. 

Is Barry moving? Iris can't tell! Obviously the fight wasn't fair: the man in yellow has been a speedster for way longer than the Flash...and it's just now that Iris realizes how much Barry pulled his punches with Eddie, otherwise he wouldn't have recovered so quickly.

Frankly, Iris' cop boyfriend pushed his limits with the recovery, all that because he didn't want to "let that vigilante think he's won." Men.

"Well, you don't know him yet," the man in yellow continues his monologue. "Nor do you know yourself."

Do all villains go to the same school, or is it just a universal fact that they love hearing their own voices? Not that Iris minds getting the accidental warning that there's a psycho watching her all the time.

"I will see you again very soon, Iris," the man in yellow promises before he just vanishes.

Iris blinks at the trail of red lightning he leaves behind, and something is off about that.

As she runs to the Flash's barely moving body, she recalls that Barry told everyone that there was yellow and red lights circling him the night of his mom's murder. She always assumed that the two colors came from the man dressed in yellow, but now...

There's another speedster with yellow lightning like Barry! Has he realized that? He should change his color to that blue one before people get him all mixed up with who might be the man in yellow's accomplice.

"Can you even change colors?" She asks Barry as she drops on the neatly trimmed grass but keeps her hands hovering because he looks real bad.

"H-huh," he exhales in a muffled voice before he turns his face to the side, spitting the grass and dirt that got in his mouth when he face-planted.

He looks real bad. Like. Real bad. There's blood on his lips and tainting his teeth, as well as a huge bruise on the visible part of his cheek.

"Please tell me that you heal fast from other speedsters' hits too," she pleads.

"O-only...one way to...to find out," he struggles to reply. "Wha...w-what colors?"

"The color of your lightning," she answers, glad that he can hold a conversation at the very least. "It's yellow. The man in yellow's lightning is red. So there had to be another speedster in your parents' house that—easy!" She half-shouts when he flips on his back.

Maybe he did it very slowly and carefully from his speedster's perspective, because he grunts "I'm fine. Gonna be better in...an hour, or four. D-don't mind me...if I...snooze."

She feels bad for giggling, but she can't help it. How does he manages to be funny after what has to be the worst beat up of his life, and he's taken an awful lots of those in his life...

"Wait, Tony!" She realizes. "You beat him up! How did that feel?"

"You...the one who knocked him d-down, remember?" He answers with a chuckle that turns into a groan of pain. "I s-should...should call S.T.A.R. Labs..."

"Wait," Iris requests, then adds "sorry!" When he hums in pain because she's grabbed his wrist before he can reach out his covered ear.

So, he's got some fancy com system in his suit. Figures.

"Whatchu doing?" Barry asks, sounding patient but exhausted, and you know, beat up.

"What am I doing? What are you doing?!" She returns. "I told you that Dr. Wells is shady as hell and you've been working with him this entire time? And you've chosen his employees as your sidekicks, but that's fine. They seem like real good people."

"Yeah?" He asks in a whisper so low she has to bend overhim to hear.

It probably helps him conserve energy to speak like that. 

"Cisco and Caitlin both say...that they owe everything to Dr. Wells, so...you're w-wrong 'bout him."

"Barry!" She chides him. "Stop doubting me, I'm your best friend! Why in the world would you trust those people and my dad but not me?"

"Iris, hey," he whispers when she suddenly feels like crap.

Like, there's gotta be a good reason why he sidelined her, right? She refuses to believe that he's suddenly listening to her dad so many years after their mental and verbal cold war just because they're co-workers.

"Is it because of Eddie?" She asks him. "Are you mad at me because I started dating Detective Pretty Boy when you were in the coma?"

"Absolutely," he jokes quietly.

She forgets herself and slaps his shoulder.

"Ow, Iris!" He whines at the same time as she guiltily whispers "sorry, sorry!"

She rubs his shoulder soothingly, and his arm too for good measure.

Oh God, Barry has been out there battling dangerous and superpowered criminals like, three times a week for the past three months? She's actually grateful to Cisco and Caitlin, and maybe she should let Barry call them since he can't go to a hospital—

"Woah," both she and Barry gasp when his left hand starts vibrating out of the blue.

"Barry! What's wrong?" She asks him then shouts in alarm when he takes off like a bullet, the negative light of his yellow lightning making her blink.

"I'm okay!" He shouts after a loud collision sound resonates in the chilly evening.

He's speaking from...the bleachers?

"Are you sure?" She asks just as loudly when she jogs across the field yet again, then switches to speed-walking because she might break an ankle the way her heels are digging into the lawn.

She's not a speedster or a stubborn cop, so if she sprains an ankle she'll take a whole stupid month to be able to walk again.

She knows because that's why she quit the cheerleader team in high school. That and her teammates looked down on Barry, calling him a creep because he watched all their rehearsals.

The football players called him her white shadow. They were idiots, but that nickname was kinda funny back then. 

"Yeah, yeah," Barry says while he moves around to sit properly on a bench.

He looks around them, and of course no one else is there. The man in yellow is long gone. In speedsters time, that is.

Speaking of.

"You're all healed already?" She asks him because she can see that the bruise on his cheek is completely gone. The blood on his lip is dark and looks dry. "That was way less than an hour!"

"Woah," he says, sounding...surprised?

He stands up and pats himself down, then stares at her with wide eyes and his mouth half open.

"Iris, you..." he starts saying but doesn't finish.

She frowns when he suddenly bends over to laugh, hands on his knees.

"O-kay?" She reacts as calmly as this crazy situation, this crazy day leaves her.

Jesus, she's been through more than any regular human should endure in just...fifteen minutes?" 

"That's why he threatened you!" Barry says out of blue when he straightens up. "But why not kill us both when he could?"

"The man in yellow?" She asks him before shrugging. "No idea, but I'm happy to be alive. Why are you even complaining?" 

"I'm not, I'm just expressing a healthy dose of suspicion," Barry tells her while waving his hand between them. "As long as I'm alive I'll try to stop him and have him arrested for my mom's murder. And as long you're with me...I'm basically invincible!"

"Huh?" She reacts, confused.

"Remember that blue spark earlier?" He asks her as he reaches out for her hand.

Zap!

"Hey!" She reacts, annoyed because now her palms are tingling.

Palms, plural, even though he only touched the left one!

"Keep your lightning to yourself, thank you!" She requests as she flexes her fingers. "I already have to deal with regular static electricity."

The tingling feeling quickly fades away so she relaxes.

Superpowers are cool and all, but now she realizes that they're also inconvenient. Thank God she's normal.

"That wasn't me, Iris," Barry tells her with a slow shake of his head and a dumb smile. "My lightning is yellow, remember?"

"Of course it's from you, silly," she corrects him, then steps back reflexively when he tries to hold her hand again. "Barry! Stops that!"

Is he forgetting the fact that he confessed his feelings? More importantly, should she act like she didn't hear anything? They do have more important things to worry about now.

"Just...five seconds okay?" He requests before he pulls down his cowl.

Wow, okay, it's official: her best friend is the Flash. She figured it out but...seeing is believing, apparently.

"Just five seconds," he insists. "Put your hand on my shoulder, here."

She rolls her eyes but humors him. She's never been able to tell him no, which would be a problem if it didn't go both ways.

"There, happy?" She asks sarcastically after placing both hands on his shoulders. "By the way, I'm still mad at you for—woah!"

She steps back because trails of lightning are glowing under the skin of his face, and his eyes are shining yellow!

Well, it's more of an orangey yellow...gold? It's cool, way less creepy than the red eyes, but...

"Uh oh," he says, his voice vibrating now. "That was a bit much."

"What?" She asks more quietly than she means.

Her throats feels a bit dry, and she feels a bit drowsy, maybe tired. It must be the adrenaline wearing off now that the danger has passed.

Barry, on the other hand, looks like he's ready for another run. Pun intended.

She gasps when his whole body starts vibrating.

"Umm, I'm not sure how far I need to go to release all that power," he warns her in his distorting voice before putting his mask back in place. "We better stick together."

"Sure, but what do you mean—Barryyyyyy!"

He lifted her up in his arms and just took off!

Iris hangs on for dear life with her arms around his neck and keeps her eyes closed for what feels like hours but it's probably just ten seconds because they're back to his lab.

"Woohoo!" He cheers like a kid then laughs like one too.

"Put me down!" She demands even though she's very comfy right where she is.

"You're sure?" He asks her skeptically as he bends his knees and loosen his hold around her. How do you feel?"

"Unimpressed!" She answers truthfully as she slides to the floor. "Why did you suddenly—"

"Easy!" He tells her when her knees abruptly give out.

What the hell?

"Alright, okay," Barry says as he helps her to his swiveling chair. "You having unlimited juice would've been too good to be true."

Say what?

"I-I'm...what's wrong with me?" Iris asks because now the tingling sensation is all over her body. Her hands are shaky too.

"Other than the fact that you're possibly a human battery? Nothing," he answers with a casual shrug. "Oh, hang on you must be—"

He zips away and returns maybe a minute later, dressed in regular clothes and holding huge Big Belly Burger bags.

She would gladly stay frozen until reality behaves and this evening goes back to being a regular day during Christmas week...

...but her growling stomach won't let her be great.

"Yeah, I thought so," Barry comments with a knowing nod.

What the hell is going on?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3 (edited)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weekly update! I’m so proud to have it out in time.
> 
> (Edited the last 3rd of the chapter, right after Iris picks up Eddie’s call)

"I'm a meta-human," Iris whispers between two bites of double cheeseburger after Barry explains his theory about what’s ‘wrong’ with her :

Her powers seem to work like that tachyon prototype that the man in yellow is trying to get his hands on. Actually, Dr. McGee's prototype isn't useful yet. When Barry talked to the brilliant physicist one on one and swore not to share her words with Dr. Wells, she admitted that her researchers are still designing the perfect conduit to safely convert the kinetic energy of the superluminal particles into electrical energy. So even if the man in yellow steals the prototype—not possible because Dr. Wells and Cisco are designing a trap for him—he can't use it to run faster.

But Iris? Just a touch and that's it. Barry lapsed the entire city in seconds after she placed both hands on his shoulders.

"The man in yellow said that I would be pleased to meet him if I knew what he’s done for us both," she shares, and seems to lose her appetite right there.

Barry stops slurping his own milkshake. Thanks to Iris he isn’t hungry after using his powers, but he skipped dinner so he decided to put something in his belly. A single burger and a milkshake will do.

He might throw that creamy liquid in a moment.

"No," he rejects the idea Iris is suggesting.

What his mom's killer is claiming.

"Barry, what were the odds of you gaining the exact same powers as the man of who killed your mom, huh?" Iris questioned. "What were the odds of anyone gaining superpowers after the particle accelerator exploded? Dr. Wells claims that it was an accident—"

"But it was a sabotage," Barry follows her line of thought before grabbing his cellphone. "I gotta tell—hey!"

She’s snatched his phone away!

"Jesus Christ, Barry!" She half yells as she slams his phone down his desk. "How did you get so far in life being so impulsive? Oh wait, it's because I was there to stop you from making stupid mistakes!"

"Hey! It went both ways," he reminds her, and her tearing up isn't the reaction he expected. "Iris, what...?"

"Exactly, it went both ways! Past tense!" She points out while looking away to dab a clean napkin under her lash line. "The moment...the moment you got powers, you left me hanging. And now you expect me to be...your speedster’s battery who gives you ‘juice’ whenever you’re low? Miss me with the bullshit, Allen," she adds with an eyeroll.

"What?" He reacts dumbly.

"Earlier you said that as long as I’m with you you’re basically invincible," she recalls. "Like I have nothing better to do but be your sidekick!"

Huh?

"I’ve got my own life now, Barry!" She almost yells as she stands up, remaining still for a few seconds—to test out her knees—before moving to grab her purse on the floor. "You’re the one who decided to exclude me from your vigilante team. You’re the one trusting a mad scientist who’s not a medical doctor but somehow...somehow..." she repeats while she flails her arms outwards and Barry slows down time to check if his phone in her hand is about to crash somewhere.

No, she’s holding it securely. Phew.

"...had the right equipment to keep you alive for nine months," she keeps going in normal time and deflates. "And while I am grateful that he did keep you alive, I can’t help but wonder if he used up all his remaining resources on you because he knew just how valuable you would be if you ever woke up."

Now she says it like that...but—

"Of course S.T.A.R. Labs had the right equipment to keep me alive, they had all the equipment to do anything modern science can achieve! I was lucky that the equipment was spared in the explosion and that Cisco and Caitlin didn’t abandon Dr. Wells like the other employees!"

"So go ahead, call him," Iris recommends with obvious sarcasm as she hands him back his phone. "Reassure him that he’s not to blame for the explosion of his machine. Tell him that he merely provided the superpowered psycho who ruined your life the means to further ruin your life with whatever crazy plans he has for you."

"You said that he mentioned the both of us," Barry points out, and okay, now he’s even more freaked out by the fact that the man in yellow is targeting Iris.   
  
  


It’s not because she’s Joe’s daughter. It’s because she’s got powers that the man in yellow covets.

"That’s the thing, Barry: there’s no 'us'!" She decides with a dismissive wave of her hand. "You don’t trust me...don’t you deny it!" She warns him when he opens his mouth to argue.

"The only reason why I found out rather than learned directly from you that you’re the Flash is because you decided to confess your feelings out of nowhere," she says in one breath as she adjusts the strap of her bag. "Or maybe you only confessed because you thought that it would affect my decision to move in with Eddie, I don’t care what your reason is. I don’t feel the same way, Barry!"

"Iris," he whispers, his fast-beating heart dropping in his stomach.

"I’m sorry," she apologizes as she takes a backward step towards the door, and frankly she doesn’t look very apologetic.

She looks furious, and she has every right to be, but Barry can’t change the past...can he?

"I don’t mean to hurt you," Iris’ words prevents him from estimating the speed required for time travel. "Whereas you hurt me by betraying my trust and you hurt Eddie by beating him up when he had no way of defending himself!"

Barry winces, but he refuses to let the guilt of that action resurface. He wasn’t himself, his anger and resentment were amplified, warped and twisted in ways that changed him.

"How could you, Barry?" Iris demands to know. "My boyfriend?"

"The boyfriend you admitted was stupid of you to date?" Barry throws back before he can even think, standing up in turn and throwing his half eaten burger in the Big Belly Burger bag designated as trash bag. "The boyfriend who wanted to hunt me down like some freaky beast because...oh, wait, because I help people in my suit better than I ever can with my toolkit and all of this?" He asks as he sweeps his arms to encompass his lab.

Iris frowns and bites the inside of her lower lip, which means that she agrees with his points but won’t say it out loud.

"I wonder how he’ll react when he learns that his own girlfriend is going to use her powers to help people," Barry admits, and he doesn’t mean to sound cruel for his next sentence but it comes out that way regardless. "That’s if Joe even allows you to move out of his place...or to step outside of its walls ever again when he learns that the man in yellow is actually after you."

Joe’s unhealthily protective of Iris, and Barry’s disappointed in himself for enabling that toxic behavior in the past few months. Back in high school he tried to help Iris apply to the police academy and gladly had a shouting contest with Joe when he found out. That’s all they ever did, Joe and him: fight.

The moment Joe found out that Barry got powers of course he believed him and started working on the case to prove that Barry's dad is innocent...but then Joe stopped looking and never told Barry. That’s karma for gaslighting Iris, he supposes.

"Don’t you dare tell either of them!" She forbids him sternly. "You have no right to tell them anything!"

"Then how am I supposed to make sure that you’re safe, Iris?" He almost yells. "You said that there’s no ‘us’, so am I just supposed to let the man in yellow do whatever he wants to do with you? What will I tell your dad and boyfriend when that killer kidnaps you again and I’m not there to protect you?"

"If you’d acted like a real best friend these past months I would have no problems with you being m bodyguard!" Iris yells back. "But I’m not gonna trust you when you still refuse to trust me!"

"How am I not trusting you now?" He asks, confused.

"Wells!" She replies without missing a beat. "That man is shady as hell, Barry, I know it, and I would’ve proven it by now if you hadn’t gaslighted me when he didn’t know that I was onto him!"

"Dr. Wells is a good man, Iris!" Barry objects, because what the hell? "He didn’t have to save my life but he did, he didn’t have to train me, but he did! And no, he didn’t anticipate the training," he corrects her before she can accuse the brilliant scientist of having ulterior motives. "I would’ve never stepped back in S.T.A.R. Labs if I—"

Wait a minute.

Barry didn’t wake up thanks to his powers, did he? He wouldn’t have been in such a long coma if his fast metabolism had been active. Even regular humans who survive lightning strikes take much less than nine months to recover!

  
Barry woke up feeling absolutely normal, and it wasn’t until he was at Jitters that—

"Holy shit," he exales while staring at Iris.

"What?" She naturally questions, crossing her arms over her chest.

The move hides her hands, which Barry thinks are much more powerful than he even thought seconds ago.

"Iris, tonight wasn’t the first time that you saw that blue spark, was it?" He inquires. "You had that look when you saw it, and somehow that spark made you figure out that I’m the Flash."

"That’s because I first saw that blue lightning spark between us when you were in the coma," she answers readily, then freezes.

"When I woke up Caitlin was baffled that I didn’t suffer from any muscle atrophy," Barry recalls. "Now she assumes that it’s because of my healing abilities but..."

"Of course that’s the reason," Iris agrees too forcefully, as if she’s unwilling to entertain any other reason, as if she already knows that potential other reason because she’s smart like that. She might not be a scientist, but she’s very logical and she can easily follow Barry’s train of thoughts as long as he doesn’t get technical.

"Pretty lame healing abilities, don’t you think?" He asks her rhetorically with a lifted eyebrow. "They took three quarters of a year to heal me from a lightning strike. It makes no sense considering that just two weeks ago I recovered from several extreme electric shocks overnight. And it’s not like my healing gets better with training. I just need to have enough glucose to fuel the healing process."

"If the conditions weren’t exactly the same of course you got different outcomes," Iris offers an explanation that has merit, but not that much when faced with the facts that Barry has.

"The reason why I rushed back to S.T.A.R. Labs was the same reason why I left it in a rush in the first place," he now knows beyond doubt.

And he knows that Iris knows too.

"I felt normal when I woke up," he recalls. "I rushed to Joe’s to change, then went to see you at Jitters. I can’t believe that I just accepted the fact that time slowed down right in front of me after we hugged...and I grabbed your hand to place it over my chest!"

He sits down, laughs and shakes his head in disbelief. He really is clueless!

  
"You’re saying that I...kickstarted your powers?" Iris asked.

"Real slow," he specifies, and she scoffs.

"That’s an oxymoron," she points out.

"We’re both the impossible so I think I can get away with it," he counters with a shrug. "My recovery was slow because our physical contact was limited after the lightning hit me. Dr. Wells said that you visited very often, but how often did you grab my hand?"

Barry does not need to slow down time to detect the moment she goes from skeptical to believing. Seriously, Iris’ faith in him has always been her superpower, and for basically two decades it’s that power that made him a better version of himself.

"You have all the right to be mad at me, Iris," he declares, looking down his feet and rubbing the back of his neck with renewed disappointment in himself because how could he let her down like that?

More importantly, how the heck can he ever make it up to her?

"I hid from you the fact that I’m the Flash, but there wouldn’t even be a Flash without you," he forces himself to say exactly what he thinks.

All his life he wanted to be an open book to her. He never meant to keep his feelings secret, he just couldn’t get the courage to confess, especially when she cut him off with words that heavily hinted that she didn’t feel the same...which she doesn’t.   
  


He wants to think that she only says it now because she’s rightly mad at him, but who caused that anger? It’s him. He hurt her, terribly so, and he’s got no idea how to fix their broken friendship!

"You...definitely can’t say that to other girls, I mean technically. Like...this only applies to me, right?"

Barry looks up and is welcome by a sight he thought he would never get to see again: Iris trying not to look flustered after receiving a compliment from him...only he’s not wearing his suit?

"I’m still mad at you!" She warns him with the most adorable scowl in the universe. "But, um, yeah, thanks for the flattery since it kinda made me feel better. By ‘kinda’ I mean ‘a lot’."

"It’s not flattery, Iris, it’s the truth," he argues, totally expecting her eye roll.

Wait a second...

"Iris, you’re amazing," he says truthfully, and of course her reply is "shut-up!"

Obviously this isn’t the first time that she rejects a compliment from him, she does it all the time, but he thought that she only reacts like that to him because they’re best friends. But she also didn’t take compliment from him as the Flash, when she didn’t know that it was him under the mask. She got a bit more flustered and dares Barry say star struck? But she always had a rebuttal at the tip of her tongue regardless.

By any chance...is Iris Ann West insecure?

That can’t be, right? She had all of the cool kids lining up to ask her out in high school, and she rejected them all because her mind wasn’t on boys back then. She did date half of the guys who asked her out in college, but that never lasted. And right now she’s dating Eddie. As much as Barry can’t stand the guy nowadays, he’s not blind: Eddie’s good-looking, driven, brave to a stupid degree, and if she cares he’s from a comfortable family. 

Of course Detective Pretty Boy still isn’t worthy of Iris, no one is...but does she know that?

"Oh," Iris says before pulling out her phone from her pocket. "It’s Eddie."

She really doesn’t have to show him her phone screen, of course he believes her...oh.

Okay, he doesn’t believe in her claim that Dr. Wells is the ‘shady’ man...but he believes in her drive to get to the truth? Maybe if he proved to her that Dr. Wells is the great man Barry, Cisco and Caitlin...

Oh! Cisco and Caitlin can help Iris, right? She doesn’t like Dr. Wells, but she likes these two!

"Iris, wait!" He calls out before she picks up the call. "Please, just...hear me out for a minute. I’ll apologize to Eddie when you call him back."

"O-kay," she agrees reluctantly after glancing at her screen. "One minute."

"You clearly don’t want him and Joe to know about your powers," he recaps, and she nods in confirmation. "And you don’t want me around. I know that you can to handle yourself in normal circumstances against most thugs, but...the man in yellow is a cold-blooded murderer who moves faster than you can see."

"I'll figure it out," she states stubbornly.

"I'm sure you will," he says to her surprise, "but how about you let Cisco and Caitlin help you out—not Dr. Wells!" He specifies when she frowns deeply. "I won't tell him anything and I'm sure that Cisco and Caitlin can keep a secret. I mean..."

"Okay," Iris agrees, a bit too quickly, meaning that she's relieved to have a solution to her very serious problem. "Thank you, Barry."

"The least I can do," he replies with a single-shoulder shrug, then nods at her phone.

Eddie's calling her again.

"Hey babe!" She greets as she walks to the door, and Barry refuses to believe that her cheer is fake. "Me? Oh, I'm at...Tracy's, remember?"

Uh, what?

"I didn't tell you? Sorry! It slipped my mind. I...no, we're not going out, just chilling, catching up you know? What...well, we can't very well chat while we're supposed to serve customers, can we? Oh, really? Rest assured, dear regular customer, I will never distract myself by talking to you during my shift ever again. Thank you for your constructive feedback!"

Well damn!

Barry makes sure not to make noise as he clears up the Big Belly Burger trash on his break table. He so wants to hear the end of that conversation.

"Well I'm not...joking, I'm not joking...I'm not suddenly in a bad mood! You belittled my work...what does it matter that it's not my dream job? I take pride in being a great barista and waitress! The customers agree that I am. I get the best tips!"

Umm, that probably has more to do with her gorgeous smile than her customer service. She does chat a lot during her shifts. Then again, the customers probably feel special when she chats with them, so...she is right, in a roundabout way.

"No, I'm not staying at Stacy's, of course I'm going home," Iris' next words kinda bum Barry, for all of two seconds because what comes next is:

"See you tomorrow, you mean...by home I meant my dad’s, since I need to first break the news that I’m moving out. If I move out..."

Barry freezes for a second, but doesn’t turn around to look at Iris, whose tone turns defensive.

"I know what I said earlier, Eddie, but since then I realized that we're going a bit fast. I think I need to give you a more thought out answer after the holidays, when my judgement isn't clouded by eggnog and all the carefree merriment floating around."

If Barry was a better man, he would feel bad for Eddie right now. But Eddie himself thinks that the Flash is nothing but trouble, so.

"Come again," Iris asks, and the lack of intonation should've warned Detective Pretty Boy that he actually shouldn't repeat himself.

Clearly Eddie hasn't spent the past year studying Iris Ann West's not-so-confusing-behavior-if-you-pay-a-minimum-amount-of attention...and Barry doesn't want to know what Eddie spent the year doing with Iris instead.

"Why do you always bring that up? My dad’s approval doesn’t count! I risked his unsufferinig judgment and belittlement by making our relationship public, and now you say that I’m scared of his reaction to us getting serious? Of course it’s serious! I'm going out of my way to get you a shirt...what? It’s not a competition! And it's just a damn key! Is my name on the lease, in which case I'll pay half of the rent?"

Barry's glad that he's not a telepath, otherwise Eddie would hear him very loudly from the other end of the line screaming "dude, don't answer that, just apologize and move on!"

"There we go, that's your real problem, isn't it? Barry this, Barry that...that ring is just a replica!"

No it isn’t. It’s the real deal. Barry had to speed around the zoo at night to find it. It took ten minutes, which is a long time considering that the zoo isn’t quite as big as he remembered it.

The wedding band, along with a few other pieces of expensive-looking jewelry, was hidden behind a rock deep inside the enclosure of endangered Goeldi’s monkeys. Barry checked and Goeldi’s monkeys live an average of ten years, so while he feels bad for thinking so he does hope that the monkey who built that collection is already dead...otherwise it might be sad right now because Barry dropped the other objects in a box at the door of the lost and found office.

"...third time, it’s not Barry's way to confess!" Iris is half-yelling at Eddie now. "It’s his way of telling me that he cares! We both lost our moms, in case you don't remember, which I suspect that you don't...yeah, my dad never talks about her to me either. He didn't keep anything of her, I was lucky to find that ring when I did!"

Joe wasn’t half as sad as Iris when he learned that she lost that wedding band. His mild reaction got Barry all the more unprepared a few years later when Joe caught him playing with his own mom’s engagement ring. It’s actually an Allen family heirloom, so today Barry knows why Joe lectured him so thoroughly and even confiscated the ring for safe keeping. But back then, Barry was bitter that Joe seemed to always find a reason to yell at him. 

Joe gave the ring back when Barry moved out, but Barry doesn’t know what to do with it now. 

He doesn’t plan on using it to propose to his future wife, that’s for sure. Of course he’s not superstitious, but...his dad grew up as an orphan too. Two Mrs. Allen wore that ring, and both died young. Barry doesn’t want his future wife to be weirded out by that fact, that’s all.

"You know what, Eddie?" Iris sighs, rubbing her forehead in exasperation. "I think that we both need to cool off, have a good night sleep, and talk again tomorrow...sorry in advance for ruining your sleep, rest assured that I'm likely to have nightmares myself...no, not because of you! I wish...I said goodnight, Eddie! Bye."

Barry rushes to pretend finishing a report that he already printed, but of course Iris' not gullible.

"I didn't lie that I was with Stacy because I have something to hide," Iris claims, winces at her own words, then amends, "actually, yes, it was to hide the fact that I have powers. I need to learn how to control them before I move in with an anti-meta cop. So thank you for suggesting that Cisco and Caitlin help me with that. Really."

"Do you want me to take you to Stacy’s?" Barry suggests, because he’s alarmed that Iris expects having nightmares tonight.

It’s not that surprising, actually, considering all the shocking revelations sprung upon her, plus her witnessing the man in yellow beating the crap out of Barry. She might need to talk to someone, and obviously that someone isn’t him.

"Stacy’s?" Iris repeats, confused.

"To actually talk to her about what happened tonight," Barry explains. "You don't have to tell her everything, but...talking some might help?"

"Actually I'd like to talk about it with you," Iris admits when then adverts her eyes and steps closer to the door. "Not right now, and probably not tomorrow...after Christmas dinner? I'll be drunk enough on eggnog, so..."

He'd rather she felt free to open up to him without any help from alcohol, but that's still more than he deserves after everything.

"I'd like that, yes," he agrees. "Whenever you feel ready, of course. At least you can get drunk..."

"Wait," Iris reacts, turning around halfway through the threshold. "You can't get drunk?"

"Accelerated metabolism entails accelerated detox," he explains with a self-deprecating smile, then he anticipates her question. "No, you’re fine, otherwise you would've already noticed a difference. Your powers have been active before I woke up from my coma, remember?"

"Thanks Baby Jesus in a manger," she says with a long sigh of relief. "And I guess I’m sorry for you? But you never drunk much anyways, not even during the frat parties I dragged you to in college."

He's not going to sound like a creep by saying that watching her have fun at those parties was intoxicating enough, so he shrugs again.

"Goodnight Barry," Iris says with a polite smile that he returns.

"Have a good night too, Iris," he wishes back. "And sweet dreams!" He adds more cheerfully than he feels.

They quickly cross the fingers of both hands at the same time and chuckle. Of course they both remember.

They did that back when Barry moved in with her and Joe, and he was plagued with nightmares about his mom’s murder. His condition didn’t improve over months and it started affecting his energy level during the day, so his therapist mentioned sleeping pills to Joe. Barry freaked out about being broken, but Iris told him that he wasn’t broken and did that finger-crossing trick and he started sleeping better shortly afterwards.

As much as Barry wants to think that the trick worked, Barry knows that he owes his improvement to his favorite book: around that time Iris would sneak into his room at night and read him ‘The Runaway Dinosaur’, so differently from how Barry’s mom would but making the story way more epic than it truly was. One time Iris even ended up sleeping in Barry’s bed because they stayed up so late for the embellished story. They never told Joe.

"Bye Barry," Iris’ soft voice as she waves at him makes him wonder if she’s reminisced about the same memories as him.

"Bye Iris," he replies with a more genuine smile before she walks out.

Barry has always thought that Iris carries a sunny aura around her and therefore a room feels less bright when she leaves, but...just now it really felt like some speedster’s sense of his detected her discreet but potent powers leave the electric system of the room.

It’s probably just in his head.


End file.
